15-Year-Old Denied Heart Transplant for “Non-Compliance”

Fifteen-year-old Anthony Stokes’s family says he’s been unfairly denied a lifesaving heart transplant because of his failure to keep up with his medicine and doctor’s appointments.

While the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta hospital has declined to comment on Stokes’s case, it explained via a statement: “We follow a very specific criteria in determining eligibility for a transplant of any kind.”

Stokes’s family friends have said they think the “non-compliance” excuse is nonsense, pointing to his bad grades and past run-ins with the law as the real reason why “they don’t want to give him a heart.”

Yet, as the president of the American Heart Association has pointed out, an ability to keep up with medication is a vital requirement for a heart transplant. “You have to follow a very strict regimen,” she said. “Hearts are very scarce resources.” Read more.

3 COMMENTS

if they have a legitimate reason to believe that he will not comply and take care of the heart there is the argument that they may as well give it to someone who will comply (not taking meds and showing up for appts is pretty dumb)

I am not sure I recall correctly the name, but I think “noncompliance” is an euphemism for the failure of a previous transplant due to his own neglect to take medication.

I think that, under current circumstances and current need vs availability ratio, transplant lists should not include patients that, for whatever reasons (which I think we should respect), are not willing to comply with it.